


from time immemorial

by royalwisteria



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Metafiction, bad literary references, i am so sorry for this tbh, pre/during/post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalwisteria/pseuds/royalwisteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princes and princesses, heroes, villains, reasons for why flowers bloom and the tide comes and goes: there are stories about these things, but there is no story about Clarke Griffin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from time immemorial

There were stories like this— there are always stories about everything, which causes Clarke to doubt the validity of this one. There are stories of princesses, dragons, robots and stories that question morality, separation of body and soul, stories about philosophy with Mills, Kant and Nietzsche riding in the backseat. There are stories about everything in the universe and this small world of theirs that she used to see every single day from space; there are Greek stories, explaining the world, stories from Africa, from the Polynesian islands, fascinating, _fascinating_ China and the godly Emperor and rarely Empress. There are stories of the Kings and Queens in Europe, the Inca Empire, Inuits and so many people across the globe, and now they’re here. There were apocalyptic stories as well, dystopias with technology gone bad, futuristic destruction and the nuclear fallout that came true.

This story Clarke doesn’t know. She used to read these stories on the Ark, would hole herself in her bedroom after dinner, after homework, and go through pages and pages of stories. Not one leaps out at her now that she and the rest of the 100 are on Earth, dealing with genetically mutated animals, the Grounders— there were stories like this, but there is no story that tells Clarke’s story.

She’s no author, she thinks as she tries to save Jasper. She is no creator, she thinks as she nods permission to Lincoln’s torturing. She deals with what she has on her two hands and Raven is even better than she is. In the end, Clarke is in a story, a star in a play called Disaster and Death Just Around the Corner told in two parts with musical interludes and she doesn’t know how it’s going to pan out; this is the second time Clarke hasn’t known the ending, and the first time her dad was spaced.

 

 

Finn is her prince: this Clarke believed. The princess always has a prince, and she has been called princess often enough lately. It is not difficult to fall for him; he acts like being here is a gift from above, or someone, and like the end doesn’t matter. It is a trap, though, because Finn never thought her a princess and he always had someone waiting for him.

She only borrows after all, never has. Finn was someone who granted her a respite she needed, took her away from the world to the art store, but he was not hers to keep. He is Raven’s, fierce eyes and sharp eyebrows, hair pulled tightly back and so incredibly independent that Clarke fights twice as hard to keep pace.

 

 

In the forest with Bellamy, his face covered in blood and her body, mind and soul exhausted beyond belief, they finally seem to become something like friends. They are a commodity for her now, and he sort of feels like the next piece in a strategic game a reader can see, acknowledge and predict the next events, but for now Clarke just savors this. He is like her, in a way: vulnerable and trying too hard. Clarke just thinks she’s better at hiding it.

Let me wipe the blood off your face, she wants to says, let me wash your hands clean. She doesn’t know Bellamy well, but she knows him well enough to know she’d be rejected. He does not like kindness, sympathy or pity. The offer would be neither; to do so would be a simple act. To help Bellamy would be like helping herself. He said he was a monster, but he’s not the only one here who is one.

 

 

Sometimes, Clarke is positive she’s dreaming. Earth isn’t real, not the way she knows it to be real, and both her parents are still alive. Her dad wasn’t spaced and her mom didn’t die on the drop ship. Everything around her isn’t real, just fictions from her mind. She doesn’t know the Blake siblings, doesn’t know Jasper, Monty, Miller, Murphy never happened— but her mind is logical and it runs quicker than her wildest fantasies.

This isn’t a fantasy. She’s pinched herself enough times to know that. These people around her aren’t faces that she’s seen once and have brought to life; they are too complex, too varied, too many for her to do so. Anya is not someone she could have thought of, the death surrounding them is not something she thinks she would have conjured while still on the Ark.

Death is prevalent in this reality, this story she’s living. She could not have dreamed this. She is not a creator and a destroyer, despite quoting Oppenheimer. _I am become Death / destroyer of worlds._ That night she cries herself to sleep, muffled sobs into her pillow.

 

 

Clarke learned blast-off from stories. She remembers the first time she heard it, curled on the couch, pressed against her dad and her mom running a hand through her hair as she passes them on her way to a Council meeting. It was a cheesy movie with old visual affects, but the phrase stuck with her.

She says it in front of a dying Raven, Bellamy, Finn, and for a moment she is transported back to the Ark, to days that were happy, simple and nostalgic. She is on the couch, she can feel the fabric against her skin, the loving scratch of her moms nails on her scalp, her dad tapping the beat to the theme song of the movie. The screen in front of her moves on to a wonderfully terrible explosion, a ship being sent into space, and this is what she wants from life.

A ring of fire, Raven murmurs. Barbecued Grounders, Bellamy says. Will it work, Finn asks.

She imagines the dramatic explosion on the screen and imagines these three things: a circle of fire around their ship, Grounders being burned alive and then the fire getting inside their ship and burning the rest of them alive.

It is irony that Bellamy and Finn aren’t in the ship when they blast off. Her stolen prince and her friend, and in return she gets the Grounder Anya, sharp cheekbones and burning eyes. An unfair trade, she thinks, as they restrain her. She’d rather have her stolen prince and friend instead.

It isn’t irony that they are all taken away to Mt Weather afterwards. It falls perfectly into the story: they win a major battle only to be taken away from the field of their bittersweet victory strewn with black corpses and they are taken to a new battlefield. This time, they know nothing. She remembers the body suits and she recognizes the Van Gogh painting on her wall.

At least she gets to see Monty again.

 

 

After a time, an unspecified time because she doesn’t have a clock, a revolving world spinning outside a window, or the sun to measure it, the white starts to make her feel crazy. The sky in the Van Gogh painting swirls in her eyes and the twelve fluorescent lights burn her retinas. The Mountain Men come and go, providing food and sometimes they take her out into more white hallways and more white rooms and ask her questions. Why are you here? Are you alone? Where are you from?

They don’t believe her answers. Clarke doesn’t know how she knows, because even in this camp in Mt Weather they wear their suits, but she has learned to read body language in an entirely new way.

She thinks she should think of coming up with an escape, but it is hard to borrow from white. Her bed is nearly unbearable uncomfortable and she mentions this in a babble in another white room. Nothing changes. She wishes she could talk to Bellamy, figure this out, hear his inspirational speeches, how he rouses the heart. She almost wishes for Finn, but Finn is for Raven, and Raven is probably dead.

All she has is Monty. Not that Monty isn’t a lot, but Monty is across the hall, in another room. They can do nothing more than stare at each other in captivity.

 

 

Clarke knows she should escape. The hero always escapes when captured; they come up with a daring plan and dart out in the most unexpected ways. She remembers, though, that she is not the hero, she is the princess. She is to be rescued. She is not to create, she is not to pen, to film or lead, what was she thinking this whole time? What was she doing? People like Finn are heroes. Bellamy is a hero, protecting his sister, striving to redeem himself.

Then there are people like her. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin: all the makings of a princess who sits and spins all day. People who try to stitch and try to heal, but they don’t really know what they’re doing. People who have gleaned knowledge from everyone around them, but have no knowledge of their own. She is fake currency, and the Mountain Men don’t seem to know that.

It stirs something in her, though, a very Bellamy-esque thought floats to the forefront of her mind. Beat them at their own game, he’d probably say. They can only hurt you if you let them.

Staring across at Monty, her expression settles into something determined and she sees Monty smile for the first time since she was brought here.

 

 

It is not an overwhelmingly clever plan and she is ashamed it has taken her this long to think of it and enact it. The plan works for it’s simplicity: they imitate the Mountain Men themselves. She blocks the camera and someone comes to rectify that, and she knocks them out. She learned how to fight from Bellamy, the places to strike to knock someone unconscious, the pressure points that are easy to get to and cause the most damage. She knew where to thrust a knife with the Grounders, but it is unarmed combat that Bellamy’s lessons come clear to mind.

She takes the suit, the keys attached to the person inside the suit, and frees as many as she can. They tackle more Mountain Men and lose some of their own along the way and there is only so many they can carry.

They step outside and run as far as they can. Clarke wants to stop and breathe in the colors, the vivacity of life around them. She wants to observe the brown bark, green leaves, a blue sky so deep her mind hurts with it. This is no Van Gogh painting in front of them, but reality; this is no story Clarke is part of, but a life she is leading. She takes heart because she isn’t a princess but a hero. She can be who she wants to be.

Bellamy finds them, with Finn. Her mom is there too. This play is still Disaster and Death Just Around the Corner, but she finds out that it is not so full of death as she thought. Death, destroyer of worlds— she amends it herself, _don’t go gentle into that good night / rage, rage against the dying of the light_. She thinks it more appropriate.

It is an emotional reunion, but Clarke finds herself being standoffish to her mom. She puts distance between her and Bellamy and an ocean between he and Finn. Raven is amongst them and she doesn’t want to see a reunion between those two. She smiles tightly, a hero and not a princess, tough and not pretty, and the way she hugs her mom is not with love.

They all notice; it is obvious. Clarke would have faulted them if they hadn’t noticed. Monty hugs her tightly before she is aware of it, skinny arms constrict her shoulders, and she is too shocked to react before he is pulling away.

 

 

Now that they have quiet moments, where they are not struggling to simply live, Clarke thinks about the people she has killed and the things she has done. She remembers being shown scars, one for each kill, and the feel of warm blood seeping into her skin. She remembers the nod to torture Lincoln and the black, burnt corpses after that blast-off. She remembers the couch she would lounge on in the Ark and huddled under blanket, swiping through pages in her next story.

There is much to be done, though; they want to move closer to the coast, like suggested before. Clarke takes part in these discussions and is heavily in favor of it. Bellamy just wants to find his sister. She doesn’t blame him and skirts around discussions with him, nearly avoiding him; his personality is big, bigger than before, she she oddly finds herself shrinking around him.

She doesn’t like to think that if it wasn’t for Bellamy, she probably wouldn’t be here now. She would still be in Mt Weather, in captivity, interviewed all the time by the Mountain Men.

They are more similar to each other than he probably knows. She is still vulnerable and trying to hard, but now she is falling apart at the seams and Bellamy is confident, strong, standing tall in front of everyone with that swagger of his. She is jealous and this jealousy is a new feeling. Clarke doesn’t know how to handle it.

 

 

The story of Bellamy and Finn’s story becomes her favorite. It becomes her favorite over  Princess Kaguya from Japan, over Narcissus of Greece, over stories of the Cult of Isis. They were brave, they were strong, and they are survivors. They dealt with fire and they won.

Clarke dealt with white, mind-numbing whiteness, and she’s still not sure she won. She is to be a hero, but she finds herself paling in comparison to these two. Her mom and Kane’s story prevails over hers as well, and she mourns for Jaha like she mourned for his son, and she finds herself alone more often than her heart wants.

Those she escaped with from the Mountain Men praise her, but she doesn’t feel like that brave person who rescued them any longer. She was thinking of what Bellamy would do. It doesn’t feel right to take credit for an action that, in retrospect, no longer feels like her.

 

 

Finn apologizes to her. Clarke doesn’t know what for and brushes it off. He’s not her prince after all.

 

 

When five, she loved Cinderella: someone coming from nothing achieving everything, obtaining all of her hearts desires. Three years later, it was one amongst many stores she loves.

Right about now, soon to reach the coast, Clarke wishes she could be Cinderella. A golden carriage, mice turned into horses, a prince at a ball waiting for her. But Cinderella wasn’t a hero.

 

 

In a conversation she overhears, Bellamy says that he’s no hero. It is a bashful remark, rare coming from him, hand scratching the back of his head. She stares at him. He is tan, as usual, dirt on his face nearly hiding his freckles, hair curling on his forehead. He doesn’t think he’s a hero, she tells herself, and then she has another thought: maybe heroes never think they are heroes.

 _All the world’s a stage / and all the men and women merely players_ , she thinks. They are acting a role, playing a part, letting the viewers decide who they are. Clarke doesn’t know if she likes it or not.

 

 

Clarke tries to remember stories about inevitability; none come to mind as Bellamy crowds her against a tree. This was meant to happen. All the avoiding, circling around him, and after channeling his thought process, it feels like it was meant to come to a head like this: Bellamy’s body a long heat in front of her, the winter coming on putting a chill in the air, a hand coming up to cup her face.

His breath fogs in the air as his thumb rubs her cheek. She feels like she should say something, but something would shatter if there was sound. In the distance, a bird chirps; Clarke can hear the faint sounds of the rest of their group moving through the forest, of leaves rustling, a laughter that floats on the air.

And Bellamy is a man of action: he leans forward and presses their foreheads together. She inhales rapidly— this is human touch. This is real, tangible, inevitable; it is how she imagines them, if she is honest, their stories once separate but now so entangled in each other that their foreheads pressed against each other is the most natural thing in the world.

The best part is this: he knows too. He knows it too, she can tell by the hand curved around her neck, fingers pressing gently just inside her hairline, the way his eyes fluttered shut once they had this intimate skin-on-skin contact.

He’s not a prince, Clarke thinks. He’s a hero, but at the same time Clarke has seen him terrified at Murphy’s hanging, destroyed about Charlotte, and broken down because of Octavia. She knows him to be one of the blood-thirstiest people she’s ever met, but Clarke also knows Bellamy to be the most protective person she knows.

She tilts her head up to press a light kiss to his lips and he smiles; the movement causes her to smile in return. Then he is kissing her in earnest, fingers digging a little more deeply into her skin and her hands curve up to grasp the back of his jacket desperately.

Maybe not love, not yet, but this is something real, not something you’d read about in stories. He is Bellamy Blake: hero and killer. She’s Clarke Griffin: princess and hero. She figures it’ll work out. 

**Author's Note:**

> i am trash t r a s h
> 
> anyways, hiatus continues, but if you feel like talking, come find me on[tumblr](rosycheeked.tumblr.com)!


End file.
